Testimony of Children (Alice Gray Book 2)

54

Hazel stood before me, but something wasn't right. Her once green eyes were now blue, bright and focused. Her voice was deep and breathy.

"Hazel?" I asked tentatively.

"Ha, well, yes child. I suppose I've got quite used to that name by now." Hazel flicked away the long plait of hair that had fallen over her shoulder. The familiarity of the action took my breath away.

But no, it couldn't be.

My mother wouldn't address me so formally, she was impulsive and affectionate. She would never be so cruel as to blame me for what had happened to Stephen.

Stephen.

My gaze immediately shot back to the stone altar. His body lay motionless. My heart sank, heavy and dense into the pit of my stomach.
Then the faintest movement of his chest lit a spark of hope.

He was still breathing.

Turning my attention back to the woman in front of me, I searched for anything that would tell me who had possessed Hazel, the most powerful witch in the coven. I narrowed my eyes as I thought of the one witch I knew that could take Hazel on. But it couldn't be Jonathan. I'd just used out shared silver magic, and that meant he couldn't. Only one of us had control at any particular time.

It had to be someone else, but who?

My first meeting with Mary popped back into my mind. Her confusion over my likeness to my mother muddled her head and brought on a fit.

No, it wasn't my mother that Mary had known. It was my great-grandmother, Evelyn Gray, leader of the Northern Coven. Practiser of Blood Magic.

I gulped and took a step back.

"I do believe that you have got there by yourself, child. Perhaps there is hope for us yet."

Evelyn clapped her hands together briskly, and took a step towards Stephen.

"Wait, don't you go near him. He isn't going to be one of your blood sacrifices, and neither am I."

Evelyn laughed a high pitched, tinkle of a laugh, that really didn't go with the image of the powerful coven leader that I'd formed in my mind.

But it did remind me of something else.

It sounded suspiciously like the silver leaves.

That didn't make sense. I'd inherited the silver life-force from my father Jonathan Device. Evelyn shouldn't be able to access it too. She was a Gray.

Everything that I had learnt about my heritage up to now suggested that the silver tree was connected to the silver-life force. I'd come to assume that my father had sent it to me as a way to keep some control over my life. I kept the thing safe, to give me some access to his life. I needed some connection to him so that I could intervene if he returned to his former madness. But what if Jonathan hadn't sent the tree, after all.

Suspicious, I glowered at Evelyn, ready to push my power out to defend Stephen.

"Blood sacrifices? What tales have they been telling you, Alice? I'd hoped that the world had moved on from the sad adage that said I could only be powerful through some dastardly manipulation. Are you not an emancipated women?"

Evelyn looked outraged and disappointed in equal measure.

"Um," was all I could manage under her hurt and disapproving gaze.

"Speak up, girl. And don't give me any excuses."

Why hadn't I questioned those stories when I knew about the vicious campaign of rumours and innuendo that the Device family had spread about Evelyn?

I liked to think of myself as a feminist. But I obviously had some difficult questions to answer if I was so ready to believe the gossip. And yet, I wasn't entirely in the wrong either. And I certainly wasn't some schoolgirl who could be reprimanded for misbehaviour.

"Hang on a minute great-granny. I wasn't brought up with the family, and I haven't exactly had much time to dedicate to your story. I've been relying on second-hand information. Just who out of the two of us is currently possessing an unwilling host?"

"How do you know she's unwilling?" Evelyn asked, her eyebrows raised in surprise at my outburst.

"You do know Hazel don't you?" I asked, mirroring my great-grandmother's expression.

"Granted, she may be a bit power hungry, but she's not a bad leader. I've seen worse. Much, much, worse. She's capable of magnanimous action when the coven is under threat, and that's as much as you can ask from a Device, really."

"Ok, so what's the threat, and why do you want Stephen?"

"I was going to help you carry him out. The rest, well, it's a complicated story that's been playing out since before even my time, Alice dear. I'll fill you in when we get out of here. It'll be full darkness soon. We need to move before she comes back."

Stephen had regained some of his colour. His breathing was stronger. When I lifted his arm to sling it over my shoulder, his limp body suddenly stiffened.

"Alice, what the hell? What did you do to me?"

"I was trying to save you. And look, it seems to have worked."

I was getting sick of people blaming me for trying to help them, when I was doing my best with very limited information to work with.

"It hurt. A lot," was Stephen's terse reply, but when he looked at me, there was a spark of humour in his tired eyes. He pulled his arm away, and tested his weight on his own. A brief wobble but at least he was back on his feet.

I was about to follow him out, when I remembered there was something else here in the room besides witches and altars.

The pool of blood glinted ominously, reflecting my approach in surreal distortions by the light of my silver life-force.

"Alice, hurry. We don't have time to dawdle," Evelyn urged.

Dragging my eyes away from the bloody mess, I looked back at Evelyn and Stephen waiting at the door. However much I longed to be able to leave this horror behind and join them, it was no use. I couldn't go until I knew for sure who was under those rags.

"I'll catch you up," I murmured, unable now to focus on anything but the gory mess in the corner.

"Hurry," was all I heard before their footsteps sounded along the stone floor, back the way Evelyn had come.

No more excuses or delays. I needed to know.
Making myself walk over to the corner, one step at a time, I took in a deep breath, steeling myself for what I might find.

A mangled paw covered in grey fur stuck out from the canvas covering. I bent to lift it when a loud scraping sound made me jump out of my skin. The grind of stone on stone was followed by a loud thump of a door being broken open somewhere else in the building.

Just the others getting out.   

Turning back to the body, I lifted the canvas before I could talk myself out of it.

Stumbling back, acid burnt my throat as I wretched violently. My eyes watered but they wouldn't close, my eyelids stapled open by the atrocity before me.

In the midst of the bloody mess, human eyes peered up at me.

Oh no! It couldn't be, could it? What's this new horror that Alice has found? Read on to find out...